Seniors Week at Coffs Coast Health Club, 18 – 25 March 2012

Fitness for ALL Ages

It’s National Senior Week 2012 at Coffs Coast Health Club! This week drop by and try one of our five “senior/boomers”classes-Monday to Friday at 8am, and sample some senior-focused exercise for yourself. It’s FREE for the week or register for a senior information seminar on Actively Aging or Laughter Yoga.

First and foremost – The body is a demand-driven, adaptable, living system that requires movement and muscular activity to maintain its function. Consider what happens to someone bedridden for a month or more; muscle mass, flexibility, strength, bone density and range of motion all drop like a downed helicopter, in just a matter of days. The unseen effects are equally damaging; every organ reduces function and slows its activity. Lack of movement is devastating to the human body.

Aging is very much like a longer version of being bedridden. Slowly, over decades, the same decreases in capability occur AND the antidote is the same: MOVEMENT. Start moving and your ability to move will improve. Walk, run, dance, stretch, lift weights, play games that require physical motion, and the losses due to aging will reverse.

Along with this improved ability to move, many other changes take place. Blood sugar levels will regulate downward and remain more even, stored fat will be reduced, insulin sensitivity will improve, blood pressure will come down and your heart will get stronger. Your vascular system will actually start building collateral arteries around blocked vessels, improving blood flow to your heart and other organs. The body’s repair mechanisms speed up, things heal faster, the immune system gets stronger; you get sick less often and you recover more quickly from virtually every malady.

So, lie on the couch, watch TV, drink beer and eat potato chips with all your spare time and the disabilities of aging will overtake you like a Mongol army. You’ve seen the stories of the 92 year old Chinese (or whatever country) man or woman, still tending the rice paddy, wondering what all the fuss is over being that old. They still ride a bike to work and enjoy life with their family five generations deep. The primary difference is that they never stopped moving.

Under this category we discuss and explain the most effective forms of exercise practiced these days. Some are way better than others for restoring or maintaining strength and fitness in seniors.

Weight Training – to trigger your anabolic, or muscle-building process; muscle you need to look good and move well, be stronger than you look and dissolve fat 24 hours a day. The most effective form of exercise for delaying age-related decline is Weight training with progressive resistance. Nothing works to reverse age-related functional decline as well and as rapidly as this. It raises Testosterone production (the hormone of your youth – needed in both men and women for maintaining muscle structure), increases Growth Hormone output, lowers blood sugar, encourages the burning of fat for energy, improves immune system function, makes bones stronger and more dense, and lets your entire body function on the level of a person decades younger. Make progressive resistance weight training the core of your exercise regime and all other exercise forms will be icing on the cake.

Aerobics – to maintain and recover your heart/lung/vascular fitness. Next, we promote Aerobics to maintain heart-lung-vascular fitness for life. However, some approaches to aerobics are more productive than others, with regard to the changes that take place with aging.

Yoga, Pilates, Stretching & Balance – Building poise, posture, flexibility, strength, endurance, balance and grace, while connecting with the spirit within – speed and power aren’t the whole story. The importance of posture, fluidity of motion, flexibility and balance are undeniable in terms of aging gracefully. We believe that the swift and the strong don’t have a corner on happiness, and hope you will take time to find the value in these milder forms of exercise. Balance becomes extremely in advanced age because most bone fractures are caused by falls, and these exercise forms maintain our sense of balance and agility.